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Time to prepare for fire season
If you plan to be prepared for fire season, now is the time to get started.
According to Coquille Fire Chief Dave Waddington, wet weather has been keeping things green. However, when it’s not raining and the wind is blowing it is drying things out. The wind doesn’t help when it comes to fire.
The rain, while keeping vegetation green, is also adding to the fuel load around homes and in forests.
“If you’re going to get ready now’s the time,” Waddington said. “If you’re spraying weeds to clean up it’s not enough to just spray them. Once they’re dead you need to cut vegetation down and get rid of it. Either burn it or take it to the dump, but you don’t want that stuff around your home.”
According to Waddington, the Coquille Fire Department is here to help. If you are in need of an assessment of hazards, you can call the fire department at 396 – 2232.
“We’ll be more than happy to send someone out to help people assess their fire hazards,” Waddington said. “Sometimes people just get overwhelmed and need a place to start."
According to the Coos Forest Protective Association, there is a lot home owners can do to reduce fire danger this summer.
Residents should create a survivable space around their homes to keep fire out. A survivable or defensible space is the area between a house and overgrown vegetation. Pruning nearby trees, mowing high grass and moving all fire prone materials at least 30 feet from your home can make a big difference.
According to CFPA, cleaning up is half the battle.
Roofs are the most vulnerable part of homes during a wildfire, according to CPFA. Fire embers from an approaching wildfire can be carried great distances and land on rooftops. If it’s time to replace a roof, fire resistant materials should be considered. It’s also beneficial to clean pine needles and leaves from roofs and gutters and remove dead branches hanging over roofs.
According to the U.S. Fire Administration, once a fire starts outdoors in a rural area, it is often hard to control. Wildland firefighters are trained to protect natural resources, not homes and buildings. Many homes are located far from fire stations. The result is longer emergency response times. Within a matter of minutes, an entire home may be destroyed by fire. In addition, limited water supplies in rural areas can make fire suppression difficult. Homes may be secluded and surrounded by woods, dense brush and combustible vegetation that fuel fires.
The area where homes meet combustible vegetation is called the interface zone. With the rapid growth in plants during spring, the interface zone can become a fire hazard in short order. According to Waddington, it’s the time to get those areas under control.
“People need to look at their situation and determine how far they need to remove any combustible materials from around the house, probably anywhere from 30 to 90 feet,” Waddington said. “If they live in what we call the interface area, having a lot of shrubs and bushes up against their house is something I wouldn’t recommend.”
